Do you have what it takes to be a Slam Poet? Well, do you have a bandana? Do you sit in a Starbucks and write in a tiny notebook about how fake everyone there is? Are your parents divorced but still fairly wealthy?

STEP 1: Read your history teacher’s copy of A People’s History of the United States. Become anti-free trade, since it’s politically popular and vaguely blue-collar without actually requiring that you change anything about yourself.

STEP 2: Write a poem using “Howl’s” structure, only changing some words to make it all modern-y:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed
by madness, starving hysterical naked,
watching WB reruns in the back seat of a Ford
Excursion as
they drive by an independent bookstore. STEP 3: Write a poem using some personal trauma, or failing that, someone else’s trauma. Unwanted sexual advances: good. Divorce: overused but not bad. Past suicide attempts: fine so long as you don’t imply you’re going to try again, which would make the audience guilty about having to do something about it.

STEP 4: Actually go to a Slam Poetry competition and sit in the back. Drink a latte and leave early. Write a poem about the experience.

STEP 5: Get up the nerve to go up there. Interpret polite applause as connecting with someone.

STEP 6: Inevitably win some sort of Poetry Slam competition.

Part II: The Archetypes

Gay Asian Guy:

“I am a banana!
I am an egg!
Or am I both?
Yellow on the outside,
White beneath.
Boiled in the waters of my sexuality!
Triple-A?
America’s Acceptable Asians.
I am not my parents’ son.
I am not China’s son.
I am my own
sun!”

White Girl Channeling Maya Angelou:

Most likely to rhyme “chocolate skin” with “ebony bird falling through air adrift as if upon an amber metaphysical dolphin fin.”

Pierced Sorta-lesbian:

“CUNT
Can’t Understand National Testosterone
My president?
Bush?
The only bush I like
is the one I lick.
Will I be a lesbian after I graduate?
No.”

White Guy with Dreadlocks:

“1492 GAA
Columbus sailed the ocean blood.
Arawacked!
San Salvador?
More like San Deathador.
San Death @ the Door!
But what now?
Dubya gives his infected blankets
to Afghanistan
Let’s make a stan
d!
This was not India.
This is not AmeriKKKa.”

Thinly-veiled Anti-Semite:

Most likely to rhyme “Zionist” with “fry on this.”

“The call GAA
it came
on a September day.
3,000
stay home
and bank
another day.”